Nintendo Land Review: Good Fun, But What Does It Mean?

1UP editors go review crew on Nintendo's optional Wii U pack-in.

Reviewers tend to conflate launch games with the new hardware itself. This approach may or may not be warranted by the games in question, but it's not an unreasonable habit. After all, you have to assume that a console maker would want to put its best foot forward -- to debut the cornerstone of the next half-decade of its entire business alongside a piece of software that declares a statement of intent for the new machine.

This may not always be a fair way to judge a fledgling system, but you certainly can't make that claim about Nintendo Land. On the contrary, Nintendo Land exists (by the company's own admission) largely to show off the Wii U's capabilities and design. It does this, perhaps not surprisingly, through the familiar paradigm of a minigame collection. As a pack-in title for Wii U (or at least the deluxe model of the hardware), Nintendo Land naturally invites comparisons to Wii Sports. And this, too, seems entirely fair -- not to mention illuminating.

The first thing you'll notice about Nintendo Land is that it's much less aggressively bland than Wii Sports. Aesthetically, for one; yes, the game still revolves around Miis, but they get gussied up far more often, and the individual mini-events span a respectable gamut of visual styles. From the hand-made look of Yoshi's Fruit Cart and Donkey Kong Crash Course to the stage-prop metaphor of Balloon Trip Breeze and Takamaru's Ninja Castle, the graphics play up the concept of fairground amusements and move blessedly away from the sterile mundanity of Nintendo's "Wii (whatever)" series.

The embellishments aren't simply visual, though; Nintendo Land also represents a step away from universally relatable sport events and toward concepts steeped in company history and lore. Mario, Zelda, F-Zero, and many other franchises put in a showing here via minigames that often put a clever spin on the rules and design of beloved Nintendo standards. These can be fairly literal interpretations (the F-Zero event is basically a single-player time trial controlled by tilting the Game Pad), or even a direct reworking of an NES classic (Balloon Trip Breeze turns the B-side of Satoru Iwata's Joust clone Balloon Fight into a cool, extended, touchscreen-driven adventure), though they're just as likely to be their own original creation in Nintendo clothing.

Still, it's not hard to see what Nintendo was going for here. They've made rumblings about how they'll be catering to a more "hardcore" audience with Wii U than they did with Wii, and this is their first salvo in that fight. By skinning a low-impact minigame collection with Nintendo characters both popular and obscure, they clearly hope to enjoy the best of both worlds: Casual audiences will love the games for their minimalistic charm, and hardcore gamers will forgive the package's overall simplicity because, hey, Zelda!

I'm not fully convinced it will be that simple, though. I think it could just as easily go the opposite way, with core fans soured on the family-friendly workings of the collection and casual passersby turned off by the cute-but-elaborate visual design that supplants the Wii Sports' bland simplicity -- not to mention the abandonment of real-world sports in favor of chasing funny animals around to steal their candy. This is the essence of the balancing act Nintendo must achieve with Wii U as a whole, and you can see the potential pitfalls right here in Nintendo Land.

Troublingly, the design of the individual games is generally more complex than those of Wii series games. That's to be expected: The goal of Wii U's core interface gimmick is more complex than the Wii's by design. The point-and-click directness of the Wii remote made for some very intuitive applications that anyone could understand. If you've ever played or even seen baseball, you understand the concept of swinging the remote to imitate a baseball bat immediately. The Wii U's tablet, however, endeavors to create a more nuanced (and therefore complicated) effect: It turns each game into a multi-screen experience, not so much directly interacting with the TV directly as supplementing it. The potential applications seem fairly boundless, and the Wii U's two-screen design could offer incredible game enhancements... but, by nature, these enhancements are considerably more complex than waving your arm and pointing at the screen.

You can most easily see the new challenges at work here by simply looking at the setup process involved in Nintendo Land games. Many of the events require involved explanations and demos in order to convey the fundamentals of play. Multiplayer events require a messy array of both the game pad and Wii remotes. I wouldn't call Nintendo Land complex by any means, but it can be complicated. Nintendo hopes to court the Angry Birds audience with this console, and once you get going the minigames here do provide that sort of simple accessibility. But the overall setup is far more involved than tapping an icon on your phone's home screen and doesn't really behoove low-impact game design, which is a considerable up-front obstacle to overcome.

Yet despite all of this hand-wringing, I don't think Nintendo Land is a bad game by any means. On the contrary, it's a lot of fun. It may prove to be a failure on the tactical front, but it demonstrates Nintendo's designers at their free-wheeling best. Each and every event on this disc is a compact, entertaining creation. The single-player titles demonstrate an arcade-inspired mentality -- how far can you go on a single credit? -- while the multiplayer events emphasize a mix of teamwork and competition. Nintendo Land easily contains the broadest variety of play styles and objectives of any Nintendo minigame compilation to date; its dozen or so events have heft and substance frequently lacking in this sort of collection. I could take or leave the cramped hub world that binds the events together with an amusement park metaphor, and the use of pachinko as the reward for spending the coins you earn seems like a missed opportunity. Happily, you can bypass both of those features if you desire.

As for the minigames themselves, they cover an impressive spread of styles and goals. Nintendo's obsession with Pac-Man Vs. manifests once again in the form of Luigi's Ghost Mansion, but they also pay homage to Metroid, Animal Crossing, and even the Japan-only Famicom classic Nazo No Murasame-jou. Nintendo fans should be in heaven. But it does seem like a lot of preaching to the choir, a practice that has yielded diminishing returns for the company over the past decade or two. I don't think Nintendo Land will do much to convince new audiences to leap into owning a Wii U -- and maybe it doesn't need to. As a collection of minigames, Nintendo Land hits the spot. But as the envoy for a new console, a game that's clearly meant to be the new system's equivalent of Wii Sports, the message it sends feels muddled.

Marty Sliva: If my group of friends/guinea pigs are any indication of how the general public will receive Nintendo Land, then the Wii U launch title has the potential to meet the lofty success Wii Sports saw back in 2006. Not since those first few months with the Wii has my television been so heavily occupied by local multiplayer. While I agree with a lot of what Jeremy said -- especially about the superfluous hub world and currency system -- I don't think these things are going to matter too much in the long run. The fact is that a majority of the games contained within Nintendo Land are deeper and more entertaining than those seen in either of the Wii Sports titles. No matter how many times you play something like Luigi's Ghost Mansion or Mario Chase, the unique dynamics of any given group can lend a fresh feel to the experience. Likewise, the single-player challenges manage to create just enough of a competitive itch to make you want to continually try to surpass your previous best.

While those I was playing with arenā??t experts of the medium by any means, they're well-versed enough in gaming to be able to immediately understand the nuances of each attraction. But whether or not gaming neophytes will be able to grasp the ins and outs of each challenge as they did in Wii Sports remains to be seen. The detrimental effect of this potential barrier to entry will be the main factor in deciding whether or not the game clicks within the pop culture zeitgeist in the same way its spiritual predecessor did six years ago.

As Jeremy mentioned, the game comes bundled in the deluxe version of the console, but I can't help but feel like Nintendo is missing an opportunity by not allowing every adopter of the hardware to immediately have this in their library. The way this collection utilizes the breadth of the GamePad's functionality delivers an important message about the future of the console; Nintendo Land proves to be more than a proof of concept, instead becoming a litmus test of the creative and social potential of the Wii U.

Jose Otero: As a piece of software that shows the potential future of both Wii U and the GamePad, Nintendo Land does an admirable job. Each mini-game serves its purpose as a proof of concept, and each one develops interesting gameplay ideas without the pressure of having to wrap everything into a larger context. Of course, the amusement park theme does provide a loose framework to hang everything on -- and a neat way to celebrate the different character stables on display -- but I see that as a potential benefit. The lack of a traditional game focus allows the competitive, cooperative, and solo attractions to stand on their own merits, with each of the 12 diversions designed to hold your interest for a short period of time. But the ones you'll engage most often depends on the number of players available.

Having played some of the competitive and cooperative attractions with the IGN editorial staff, I found myself impressed by how much fun these mini-game diversions can be. Take Animal Crossing: Sweet Day, for example, and how it turns everyone against the person using the tablet controller. Even cornering the runner in Mario Chase sets up some surprising and hilarious situations with the right friends. For a casual player who only has a small familiarity with Nintendo, these attractions can slowly funnel them back into the fold, at least until a more substantial game comes along to take these concepts even further.

I only wish the overall economy of Nintendo Land didn't depend on my contributions so much. Each challenge tier has to be unlocked, and all the coins collected go into a silly pachinko contraption that doesn't always reward me for trying. The idea of having to unlock stages and knick-knacks within Nintendo Land feels slightly dated concept and is ultimately useless. And the overall package ultimately amounts to yet another mini-game collection, and one that doesn't have to stick to such a traditional video game structure. Obviously, mileage for these attractions may vary, but Nintendo Lands delivers a fun title to keep you busy while friends and family visit during the upcoming holidays.

Only Nintendo Money...

...Can earn a B+ on a game where the reviewers question what it is. I have been reading videogame mages since the 90's and the two trends have always been - Nintendo and EA get high scores all of the time! Small publishers get real scores which can discourage sales, but Nintendo has it's new system out and EA needs the fools to buy the Madden updates for $60! Hell, i'd pay people for great reviews too!

This is actually my most anticipated Wii U game

Exactly as Expected

I give Nintendo credit for simply not reskinning a new Wii Sports--the games here actually look both clever and fun, at least in most cases. And the art isn't half bad, either.

What's disappointing, though, are the little things, like a lack of on-line leaderboards and on-line play. As usual, features that should now be standard--especially for a title that's all about multiplayer--still go missing in Nintendo's product.

That doesn't bode well for the future, but at least the game itself is still solid.

It does have leaderboards

Nintendo Land features Miiverse integration, however miiverse isn't up and running. All of the reviews for NL and NSMBU don't account for the extra functionality. Aside from the leaderboards NL actually has a cool plaza like area where you can interact with people from around the world. Since language is a barrier Nintendo allowed for communication with hand drawn messages.

There's a video on youtube that shows off these aspects. It's kind of surprising to see all of these reviews pop up when an entire part of the package is unavailable to test.

Maybe I'm getting too old,

but I like the fan service approach to this. I planned on buying this at launch before I knew I could get it with the system (though it always did echo with the sound of "pack-in game"). I mean, if this were somehow an actual theme park, who wouldn't go?

And Jeremy, "Nintenod's obsession" with Pac-Man Vs. stems from the fact that, if you can muster up all the hardware, it's freakin' awesome.

Oh look, the EGM 3-way review returns

With T-Frog taking the lead review. It would be cool if you guys had the freedom to play around with the graphic design instead of: text block, picture, text block, etc. I know I know, you work with what you got.

In the meantime I'm still trying my luck for a free Wii U. I forget when it finishes but you can attempt it once a day. You don't need a receipt, just request a code from the website.

I wish

I had more of a soft-spot for Nintendo. They really do know how to do fan-service - games like this, Animal Crossing, Smash Bros, and Mario Kart all cater to both casual audiences and Nintendo fans. Me, I have a soft spot for Sega and Square Enix, and we don't see nearly as much fan service in the quality of Nintendo games. About the closest we get is, respectively, Sonic Racing and FF: Dissidia.

Still, it's great to see that they've catered more to fans instead of, as you mention, the bland Wii stylings.